The Congress of the Asian Society of Transplantation (CAST) is the region’s largest and longest running gathering of transplant physicians, surgeons and other health professionals involved in transplantation. The 14th Congress was held in Singapore from August 23-26, 2015. Dr. Sumana Navin, Course Director, MOHAN Foundation presented a paper on ‘Impact of Trained Transplant Coordinators on the Deceased Donation Transplantation Programme in India’, which was conferred the Best Abstract Award at the congress.

The abstract carried an audit of the work of trained transplant coordinators working in different hospitals in India with regard to their success in counselling families of brain dead patients and facilitating the retrieval of organs and tissues. In close to six years MOHAN Foundation has trained 970 transplant coordinators through its structured training programmes. The work done by trained transplant coordinators in the country resulted in the retrieval of a total of 4229 organs and tissues from 711 deceased donors and from donation after cardiac death in the period December 2009 to September 2015 (figures updated since submission of abstract and presentation). The impact of the work of trained transplant coordinators resulted  in  41%  of the total multi- organ donors in the country and 43% of the total organs retrieved from deceased donors from 2012 to 2014 on an average.